Judgmental Attitude Of Society In The Scarlet Letter By Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the novel The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, the Puritan society and its doctrine have dictated the people’s lives and makes their devotion to God to cause them to see the worse of its people. Hester Prynne, the main character, has her reputation ruined by committing adultery which causes the Puritan society to punish and continuously judge her. In addition, the minister Arthur Dimmesdale, is stuck between confessing to his sin of adultery or keeping it a secret which causes him to go insane. Finally Pearl, who is the product of Dimmesdale and Hester’s sin, is the most affected by the Puritans value’s because she is thought to be the devil’s child and is not treated fairly. As a result, in The Scarlet Letter Hawthorne uses the characters in his book to demonstrate how the judgemental attitude of society creates conflict with its people and within its people by causing the characters to question the good and evil influences …show more content…
He continues to be afraid of what society will do it him and worries that if the people he has been preaching to finds out the truth, they will punish him worse than Hester because of his status as the minister. However, at the same time Dimmesdale says, “Else, I should long ago thrown off these garments of mock holiness, and have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at the judgement-day. Happy are you Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom” (Hawthorne 173). Even though he is afraid of what the outcome will become if he confesses, he also would rather be punished than be a minister. He believes that Hester got the easy way out of the situation and believes that he is cursed with the burden of the sin; thus Dimmesdale becomes a hypocrite. Dimmsdale can confess to the whenever he wants, yet he puts himself in a position in which is at a crossroad with the people and with his himself on what to